46 Huub van de Sandt completely from this realm of human passion and destructiveness. Rather than testing his creatures, God sends them good things. James speaks of how “by his decision,” God “gave birth” to humans by a “word of truth”. The reversal with regard to 1,13-15 is complete. The meaning of this passage emerges from 3,13-18. Speaking of the divine wisdom giving birth, James uses ajpokuevw (“to bear young”) instead of the more familiar synonym gennavw or tivktw. In our passage, he speaks about the lovgo" by which God brings about a rebirth so that we are the “first fruits” of his creations “of truth” (1,18, ajlhqeiva"). Verses 1,19-21 begin with the address: “my beloved brothers and sisters”, employing thus the same vocative used at the beginning of 1,16-18. In 1,19-20 the initial result of human ejpiqumiva is specified as anger (ojrghv) (27): “Know this, my beloved brethren, let every man be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger, for the anger of man does not work the righteousness of God”. A further observation crucial to the remainder of this paper, is that it is not just the particular detail of the general passage in Jas 1,14-15 — which in 1,19d-20 is spelled out as ojrghv — that connects the two passages, but also the formal characteristic of the figure. The form of each of the two passages is best designated as concatenation because they show the repetition of one word from the preceding phrase in the phrase which follows it (28). In Jas 1,14-15 the catenated form of “desire” and “sin” lead to death while the chain-syllogism in Jas 1,19-20 draws attention to the result of anger. Since v. 19 of this unit deals with speech, it is probably a sudden outburst of impetuous anger against another Christian which is meant. The angry eruption according to v. 20 does not produce the type of righteousness which reflects the standard God set for humanity. (27) According to WALL, Community of the Wise, 192-247, James 4,1–5,6 elaborates on this third member of this triadic proverb: “quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger”. Each of the three exhortations of this proverb “supplies the thematic interest or orienting concern for each of the three successive units that make up the composition’s main body: ‘quick to hear’ is explained in 1:22–2:26, ‘slow to speak’ in 3:1-18, and ‘slow to anger’ in 4:1–5:6” (69). (28) On the chain-saying form, cf. DIBELIUS, James, 94-99; J. MARTY, l’Épître de Jacques: étude critique (Paris 1935) 35. Of course, Jas 1,2-4 shows in concatenated form how endurance under testing comes to perfection, while 1,12- 15 employs the exact same concepts. “Something similar is found in Jas 1:2-4: the climax, which is presented in the form of a catena, properly reads ‘trials’ – ‘endurance’ – ‘perfection’ (peirasmoiv – uJpomonhv – teleiovth")” but “the passage in Jas 1:14, 15, which we took as our point of departure, offers a purer form of the catena” (see DIBELIUS, James, 97).